Self-Interview

The same as all beauty contest winners want. World peace. Spiritual enlightenment. The end of human suffering. Saving the planet. A ten-hour work week.

Ha-ha. But seriously…

That was serious.

Where’d you come from?

Ah, one of the four Buddhic questions. I grew up down the Peninsula in what was then called East Palo Alto but is now part of Menlo Park. Went to high school at Menlo-Atherton. Left for college and never returned.

And your family?

My father was from Ireland and worked for Del Monte foods as a plant geneticist. He’s the one who developed the “stringless” green bean—long before they were doing genetic modification. My mother was from Montana where she’d been a teacher. After my father died—when I was ten—she became a librarian. My younger sister Patty is a writer in the Silicon Valley industry.

I spent six months wandering around Europe. I came back to sell the VW that I’d previously stored in New York before taking the passenger liner (ah, those were the days) to Europe. Kennedy exempted married men from the draft and I was single and 21 years old. A prime target. I joined the Army for four years figuring that if I went in for a longer period I could do something more interesting than carry a rifle.

Did you?

Yep. I spent six months studying German at the language school in Monterey, then another six months in intelligence school in Baltimore. After that, I was an intelligence agent in Germany and Vietnam, each for a year.

You didn’t need to carry a rifle?

Well, actually it was a pretty good idea in Vietnam but it wasn’t my main function. It was more of a useful accessory. It went well with the camouflage uniform.

What were you doing overseas?

In Germany we were running agents into the East Bloc. In Vietnam, I advised an undercover Vietnamese Army unit and hung out with the local CIA guys. Since we couldn’t win the war on the outside, we played Risk and drank good Scotch all night.”

Then you got out?

I spent five or six months at Ft. Bragg in North California first. If I’d known what Bragg was like, I’d have stayed in Vietnam longer.

You didn’t care for Ft. Bragg?

Let’s just say it didn’t represent the best of the South.

What then?

As I said, I redeemed myself at UCSB, got a degree in German, married and (stupidly) divorced my college sweetheart, worked at a newspaper in Marin for awhile and headed north for a new home. I didn’t see any place I particularly cared for till I got to Vancouver, B.C. I loved it. I stayed there for 10 years.

How long did it take you to get over your first wife?

I haven't.

What did you do in Canada?

Advertising copywriting, screenplay writing. I worked for a year and a half in the Canadian Rockies writing scripts for full-length wildlife movies. I lived on a compound with more than 100 animals and shared a trailer with a grizzly bear named Willie. Willie didn’t snore much, but he did pace back and forth all night. (Willie also starred in the movie Jeremiah Johnson. I think Robert Redford had a supporting role.)

I went back to Vancouver, got involved in the human potential movement – various group therapies, lots of crying and shouting and other fun – and ended up in a spiritual school called Arica, after taking a 40-day training with them. I’ve been connected with Arica ever since though it’s been a long time since I've actually taught Arica programs.

And you came back to California?

I’d met a lady from Los Gatos, fell immediately in love and left Vancouver to be with her. Unfortunately, she called the night before and said “Forget it”–her (ex) boyfriend was unhappy. I was all packed and it was time for a change, so I moved to California anyhow.

How long did it take you to get over the lady?

I don't think I have.

To Napa?

No, to Marin. I eventually met my future wife Kathryn in the city. I was running the Arica office in San Francisco and we fell in love over the phone. We both ended up moving to Napa.

Why Napa?

We had a number of friends from Arica up here. Also, we lived in a small one-room hovel in Pacific Heights (I don’t think Pacific Heights has hovels anymore) and one night got in the car to drive to a restaurant. We spent half an hour looking for a parking place, gave up and went home to eat. We then spent half an hour trying to find a place near home to park. That was it. Within a week we’d moved to Napa.

When was that?

1980. We’ve lived in the valley ever since. Eight years in Yountville and the rest in Napa.

What have you been doing?

I started out doing winery advertising and public relations. Did some ghostwriting. Worked at Queen of the Valley in their customer relations department. Poured wine and led tours at Beaulieu Vineyard. Designed software interfaces and wrote user manuals. Worked in the computer department at The Doctors Company. Was a staff writer for Wine Business Monthly. For some years now, I’ve been focusing on my own websites and books.

We’ll get to that but first, you’ve been doing things with the Internet for a while, right?

I’ve been on the Internet since the public was able to do so. In 1985, I logged onto the WELL (Whole Earth Lectronic Link) the first day it was online. It was started by Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog gang and quickly became the pioneering online community. I wrote the first manual for The WELL. Everything was volunteer then. At the time I was also working for MicroPro in Marin. They had the world’s most popular word processor. Few people these days have ever even heard of WordStar. Such is longevity in technology. I also worked for a while for Adam Osborne’s Paperback Software. Another company with a great product that didn’t last.

In the late 1980s I tried to convince the vintner’s association and the Napa Chamber of Commerce that they should start promoting themselves, and communicating throughout the community, via the Internet and something I called “NapaNet”. Since few people had ever even heard of the Internet, my attempts weren’t met with rousing success.

I tried again in the early 1990s and was fortunate to hook up with Terry Faherty, a teacher in the Napa Valley Unified School District. She and her tech team liked the idea and Terry and I ended up spearheading NapaNet. Others quickly joined in, including the NVUSD administration, Barbara Nemko at the County Office of Education, and The Doctors’ Company. Upvalley school districts and local businesses also got involved and we soon had a non-profit whose mission was to connect every school in the valley to the Internet. That non-profit ended up morphing into the for-profit company that NapaNet is today. But it helped all the kids get online.

What else have you done on the Internet?

I founded a website called NapaValley Online. I later sold it, then a few years later founded a new website called NapaNow, which I've recently sold. It was based on The Napa Valley Book.

Peak Oil is when worldwide oil production reaches its maximum and then starts to descend. Some people think it won’t happen for years, some say it happened this year, some say it happened as early as 2005.

So what? Isn’t there lots of oil left?

Sure, but it gets harder and more expensive to produce. And demand is increasing significantly, not just in India and China but in this country as well. The world economy is based on growth and growth has been based on cheap oil. Those days are over.

I’m working on a book about Cuba. I’ve been fascinated with the place since the Revolution and spent a month there a few years ago studying Spanish at the University of Havana on a culture/language tour arranged by Global Exchange. My book will be kind of a “Cuba for Dummies”. Most Americans haven’t the foggiest idea what the Cubans have accomplished. I hope the book will help that awareness. In the meantime, people can listen to my Internet radio station that plays Cuban music by Cuban artists, 24 hours a day. It’s at www.RadioFreeCuba.com. (The book on Cuba is now finished and called Cuba for the Misinformed.)

I should also mention my book. Scan Me - Everybody's Guide to the Magical World of QR Codes. It grew out of a project on QR codes that I did for my master's program. QR codes are those little square barcodes that are starting to appear around the country. They're huge in Japan and South Korea, and they'll take off here eventually. I wrote the book to help spur their use.

Tell us about your family?

My wife Kathryn is a graduate of both Berkeley and Stanford and recently retired as executive director of Fair Housing Napa Valley. She was formerly on the Napa County Board of Supervisors and before that the county planning commission and the Yountville Town Council. She’s very dedicated to serving the community. And she still believes in the political system.

You don’t?

Maybe locally but not much higher. I got disillusioned in the very early 1960s when I discovered my government lied—a lot. I pretty much gave up after the 1968 election, although occasionally I get sucked into it.

More family?

Our daughter Joanna, who graduated from New Tech High and went to Grinnell in Iowa for college, and then got a Masters in Regional Planning at Cornell University. She wants to help design intentional and co-housing communities. She's currently for the planning department in the City of Oakland. Food is a bigger interest of hers. She has a website at www.recipeforsustainability.com where you can read her master's thesis - a study of the Napa County food system.

We also have a neurotic cat named Sophie. She bites a lot. But she also cuddles a lot. Overall it’s a plus. And we have a new member of the family, Truffle, our second cat. He's more mellow than Sophie, but spends a lot of time roaming the neighborhood.

What’s your take on the Napa Valley?

It’s a beautiful place. Unfortunately, I think large scale tourism destroys rural communities, particularly when it turns an area into a playground for the rich. My views can be best seen at my mock advertisement for “NapaLand – Picturesque Valley of the Sybarites – It’s America’s Most Upscale Theme Park”.

Any goals for yourself?

Get out of the valley. I have kind of a geographic attention deficit disorder. So far I’ve tried to convince my wife to move to Mexico, Central America and South America. I even started a website for that purpose--Boomers Abroad -- which I’ve since sold. No luck. Currently I’m working on British Columbia. I’d like to live on Vancouver Island, but my wife thinks anything beyond the Bay Area is uncivilized. “There be dragons” as it used to say on ancient maps.

And if you stay here?

Try to help make it as sustainable as possible to deal with Peak Oil and climate change. Encourage community gardens and community supported agriculture. We live in what is (allegedly – I have doubts that it’s true) the most agricultural county in the Bay Area and we basically grow no food. Better transportation, including electric streetcars in Napa and train service between Calistoga and Vallejo. It’s a tragedy that St. Helena has fought the Wine Train all these years and yet the people in St. Helena still whine about traffic on their main street.

Also, I’d like to see the concept of neighborhoods encouraged in Napa (which has started to happen thanks to the Association of Napa Neighborhoods). Neighborhood control over some funding, as is done in Seattle. Sharing of skills and resources at the neighborhood level. Neighborhood lobbying of city government. Also some small shops and grocery stores in neighborhoods so people don’t have to go so far to get essentials. This will all have to be done eventually. The current zoning in this country is a disaster. It’d like to see it start now.

There's one other thing you didn't mention.

Right. A few years ago I did a two-year MA program in Creative Media at the University of Brighton in the UK. My thesis was on "Sound, Ostranenie and Social Consciousness." You can see what I've been up to in the academic area on the Academic page of this website. [update: Now a doctoral candidate at Flinders University in Australia.]

Ostranenie?

Read the webpage.

What’s one of your favorite fantasies?

Running a beer/wine/coffee café where people of all ages can hang out, have community meetings, see films, perform comedy, poetry or whatever, sell works by local artists and writers. We’d have a policy of no cell phones and every table would have squirt guns. Customers would be authorized to squirt anyone talking on a phone. We’d have free wi-fi in a segregated anti-social section but wouldn’t allow laptops in the main area.

Any other fantasies?

World peace, spiritual enlightenment, etc. And living in Victoria, B.C. Or maybe Uruguay. Or France. Or Spain.